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Tag Archives: summer

Whereas July 2018 was part of a long hot, dry spell, this year Longmeadow starts the month sodden after a particularly wet June. But, by British standards at least, July is always warm so midsummer rain means lushness and green everywhere along with the intense colours of the high summer borders. The biggest problem of this is that everything has to be staked and supported because not only does the rain batter and weigh down flower and foliage, but it also encourages masses of soft, sappy growth. The upside is that it is lovely!

The roses do not like the weather but the first half of the month is when they are at their best, from the old-fashioned shrub roses in the Cottage garden to the rambling roses hanging in swooping swags from the branches of the apple trees in the orchard. The more we dead-head, the longer we can extend their season into July but by the end of the month most have done their work and are finished.

The garden shifts into another gear. The light becomes thicker and although the days are drawing in from their June extremes, the evenings are still long and warm and all the plants such as dahlias, agapanthus, cannas, sunflowers and cosmos that all come from much closer to the equator, start to kick into their flowering stride and provide a whole new, richer palette to our borders.

The vegetable garden in July has lots of salad leaves, peas, beans, new potatoes, beetroot, garlic, carrots and artichokes and and tomatoes just beginning to bear fruit. The rhubarb and asparagus have their last picking at the beginning of the month and then are left to grow freely so goodness can be fed back to the roots to provide next Spring’s bounty.

Soft fruit is at its best with strawberries, summer raspberries, Tay and Logan berries, gooseberries, black and red currants and all ready for harvest.

Longmeadow is alive with song birds
in July as most of the young fledged and explore their new territory, learning
to fend for themselves before moving on later in the year.

What to do in the garden this month:

CUT BACK EARLY FLOWERING PERENNIALS

Early flowering perennials such as oriental poppies, delphiniums and hardy geraniums such as g. phaeum should all be cut back to the ground to encourage fresh regrowth and repeat flowering in a couple of months time. This also creates space for tender annuals and perennials in the border. Remove all cut material to the compost heap, weed around the base of the plants, water if necessary and do not plant too close to them so that they have light and space to regrow and flower again at the end of summer.

SUMMER
PRUNING APPLES AND PEARS

Pruning apples and pears at this time of year in summer is very useful for trained forms like espaliers, cordons or fans or mature trees that have become too large or crowded because, unlike winter pruning, done when the tree is dormant, this hard cutting back will not stimulate vigorous regrowth. Unless you are training a particular new shoot, remove all this year’s growth back to a couple of pairs of leaves (usually about 2-4 inches) being careful not to remove any ripening fruits. If you are training the fruit to a particular shape, tie desired but loose growth in as you go. Cutting it back now also allows light and air onto the fruit that is ripening and stops your trees becoming too crowded with unproductive branches.

STAKING

The extra warmth of July – and the wetness that comes with it – often leads to a flush of lush growth that plants cannot support. The result is that borders can start to fall all over the place, plants outgrowing themselves and toppling chaotically – especially if lashed by rain winds or thunderstorms and what was lovely profusion, can become a disaster zone overnight.

So it is good to have some brush wood such as hazel pea sticks or metal supports ready and to gently work round the borders easing plants upright and providing the underpinning that they need – but without reducing the border to a stiffly corsetted state that loses all the charm of midsummer bounty. Ideally it should not look as though you have done anything at all.

This can often apply to taller growing annuals such as ammi majus, sunflowers, cleome, Cosmos sensation, tithonias and Leonotis – all of which are stalwarts of Longmeadow. As these are planted individually it is hard to support them in the gently bolstering fashion that suits a large herbaceous perrenial, but they can be staked to half their height and tied with soft twine so that they can still move gently but not collapse completely.

CUT HEDGES

Young birds will have left their nests by now so hedges can
be safely cut. A trim now will allow any subsequent regrowth to harden off
before possible autumnal frosts.

Start by cutting the sides. Be sure to make the base of the hedge wider than the top – regardless of the height. This ‘batter’ allows light to reach the bottom half and ensures full, healthy foliage down to the ground. Then cut the top, using string as a guide to keep it straight and level. If it is an informal hedge, curve the top over so it is rounded.

If you have an overgrown hedge now is the best time to
reduce it in size whereas if you have a hedge that needs reinvigorating, wait
until winter and trim it hard when it is dormant. This will promote more
vigorous growth next Spring.

If the hedge trimmings are not prickly they will be soft
enough to chop up with a mower and added as a useful contribution to the
compost heap.

PICKING
RASPBERRIES

I would trade the very best strawberry for any raspberries and the summer fruiting varieties are at their best in July. Summer-fruiting raspberries carry their fruit on the canes that grew the previous summer – so all the fresh growth made in the current year will crop next July – whereas autumn-fruiting types such as ‘Autumn Bliss’ produce their fruit on the new-season’s growth. There is a freshness and seasonal treat to the summer raspberries that makes them especially good and we often pick a bowl just before supper and eat with a little cream whilst they are still warm from the evening sun. Heaven!

TOMATOES

It takes a hot summer for many of my tomatoes at Longmeadow to ripen
before the very end of July but there is still a lot of tending to be done.
Side shoots have to be nipped off almost daily – a job that I try and do first
thing in the morning when I open up the greenhouse because the plants are
turgid and therefore brittle and the shoots snap off satisfyingly easily.

We water the tomatoes just twice a week unless it is very hot and do
not feed them at all in July. The compost added to the beds gives them the food
they need at this stage and overwatering can cause the fruits to split.

The hotter it is the better the fruit will taste but it is important to have as constant a temperature as possible rather than great fluctuations between day and night so how much we open and close the windows and doors will vary a lot. But ventilation is very important to decrease the risk of blight and viruses and as the month progresses I start to remove the lower leaves so that air and light can move around the plants and ripen fruit in the lowest trusses.

FEEDING CONTAINERS

Most plants grown in a container of any kind will exhaust the available nutrients from the compost they were originally planted as they grow and will need a regular supplementary feed for the rest of the summer. A weekly feed high in potash that will help promote root and flower formation (but not over-lush foliage) is ideal. I find liquid seaweed or a proprietary liquid tomato feed to work well.

The secret is to give just enough – and not too much. Too many nutrients is as damaging as too few as it causes rapid, lush growth – often at the expense of flowers or fruit – and which attracts extra fungal and predatory problems. Never be tempted to make the feed any stronger than the instructions dictate and if in any doubt reduce the strength. Your plants and displays will be the better for it.

PRUNING RAMBLING ROSES

It is very important to keep dead-heading roses as the petals fade to encourage repeat flowering, but some roses have now finished all that they are going to do this year. Most ramblers fall into this category, especially in the south of the country, roses such as ‘Wedding Day’, ‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’ or ‘Felicite Perpetue’ should be pruned as soon as they have finished flowering. If you are in doubt as to whether your rose is a climber or a rambler, ramblers tend to be much more vigorous and always have a mass of small flowers that never repeat once they have finished.

Many ramblers are best grown into a tree and these can be left unpruned apart from straggly, unkempt, growth. However if space is limited or you are training the rose in any way this year’s new shoots should be tied in or cut back according to the circumstance. Remove any damaged or very old shoots, cutting them right back to the ground.

If training round a vertical support it is best to wind the stems in a spiral. Otherwise, the more horizontal the stems can be trained, the more flowers will be produced next year.

Finally, tie in any loose growth and
mulch well.

SOWING PARSLEY

I
like to have a constant supply of parsley which can easily be done as long as
you make successional sowings and now is the best time to sow the seeds that
will provide plants for harvesting through winter and the first part of next
spring. When the seed has germinated prick out the seedlings into individual
pots or plugs and grow them on until large enough to plant out.

Do
not be tempted to leave a sprinkle of seed that develops into a bunch of
spindly seedlings but thin and encourage each individual plant to be strong.
Space them at least 9 inches apart and allow each to became really vigorous.
The well-spaced plants will have a big root and recover quickly from being cut
back by throwing up more fresh leaves and thus provide a much better source of
leaves for a longer period.

PICKING SWEET PEAS

Few garden
chores can be as pleasant or undemanding as this but be sure to regularly pick
all the flowers from your sweet pea plants is the best way to extend their
flowering season. Sweet pea flowers will rapidly develop seed pods in warm
weather and these drain energy from the plant and trigger more seed production
at the expense of flowers. I have found that the optimum picking period for
sweet peas is about 10 days. It is important to remove every single flower –
and to enjoy the resulting fragrant bunches of blooms for the house.

Use scissors and
cut the stems as long as possible and as soon as you see any seed heads remove
them immediately. This way, in a cool summer, the plants can go on flowering
right into September.

HARVEST GARLIC AND SHALLOTS

If the leaves are yellowing and seed heads are forming, this is a good indication that garlic and shallots (and onions too if they are ready, although they may need a few more weeks yet) are usually ready to harvest. Always use a fork to carefully lift them rather than yanking them out of the soil by hand as you want to try and avoid damaging the roots and especially the root-plate – where they attach to the bulb.

Clean any surplus soil but do not remove any foliage or roots before putting them to dry thoroughly. This can be done by leaving them on the soil if it is dry and warm, on a home-made rack made from chicken wire stretched over posts or in a greenhouse. Once they are absolutely dry – usually after a few weeks – they can be topped and tailed for storage.

SUMMER PRUNING CURRANTS

After gooseberries, red and white currants have been harvested – which they all will by the end of July – it is a good idea to give them a summer prune. Remove any new growth that is crowding the centre of your bushes and cut back the new shoots you wish to keep by about a third. This will let light and air into the plant, encouraging the wood to ripen and spurs to form which will carry next year’s fruits. Blackcurrants can be pruned hard – removing up to a third of each bush – immediately after harvest.

August always has that bittersweet combination of long summer days and a real sense of summer slipping away. August evenings are velvet-rich with golden light as the days draw in, and the month has a fullness, like the aftermath of a delicious meal, that pervades the whole garden. The August borders take on a kind of mature, leonine energy with strong colours made richer by the combination of heat and falling light.

Longmeadow takes on a new suit of clothes. There is a new richness of colour dominated by oranges, burgundies, purple and gold. Every day that passes is a bite out of summer and the movement is towards autumn. Yet the borders gain an intensity as though to counter this.

There used to be a piece of received wisdom that August was somehow a dead month in the garden. Maybe climate change has had an influence but if it ever was true it is certainly not so now. Whereas our July gardens started to feel worn out by drought and heat the August borders take on a kind of muscular energy, full, mature and assured. The sun is lower in the sky and the evenings, by the end of the month, much shorter so my favourite time of day is when the early evening sun hits the rich colours in the borders so that they glow with regal intensity.

August is also the peak of the vegetable year. It is the month of harvest. Gradually, one by one, all the crops are gathered in from the glut of tomatoes – perfect for freezing for sauce deep into winter – to that first ripe corn on the cob or my favourite August dish, a ratatouille made from my own onions, garlic, courgettes, tomatoes, dwarf beans and chilli.

EARWIGS

At this time of year it is very common to find that the petals of dahlias are clearly chewed and nibbled, often reducing them to tattered rags and pale imitations of their supposed glory.

The culprits are earwigs that have a distinct penchant for what is – to them at least – a juicy and delicious dahlia flower.

Conventional horticultural advice is to trap the earwigs overnight by placing an upturned pot or a matchbox on a cane by the dahlia and stuffing it with straw. The earwig goes into this at dawn to rest up, thinking it a convenient safe haven but realising that you, the gardener, are about to come along and extract you from your strawy bed before doing something very unpleasant and probably terminal.

But the common earwig, Forficula auricularia, is a fascinating creature. Earwigs certainly do not rely upon the dahlia for their daily diet, being pretty much omnivorous and will eat other insects that gardeners consider as pests. They thrive in mild, damp conditions which makes the UK almost ideal for them but can most readily be found under loose bark or any woody crevice in great clusters – attracted to each other by scent pheromones that they release. The females lay about 30 cream coloured eggs in underground nests in the new year and the nymphs hatch out in April and go through a number of cycles during which time the female will protect and feed them, until they are large enough to foray out on their own.

They seem to like dahlias because in late summer and autumn – when dahlias are at their best – the massed petals of the flower heads provide ideal shelter for them and once ensconced they nibble a little at their surroundings.

What to do in the garden this month:

CUT LONG GRASS

If you have areas of long grass – especially if they are planted with bulbs like daffodils or crocus, they should have been left uncut to at least the beginning of last month to allow flowers to set seed and bulb foliage to die back. But by now all long grass should be cut as short as possible. The aim is to expose areas of bare soil so that fallen flower seeds can make contact and germinate.

This might mean hiring a powerful cutter or using a strimmer – although a scythe still does the job as well as anything. Once the grass is cut it should all be raked up and put onto the compost heap (making sure that it is thoroughly dampened with a hose unless it is a very small amount). It is important to remove all cut grass as otherwise it feeds the soil as it decomposes and this will encourage lush regrowth at the expense of the wild flowers and bulbs. However, as long as the grass cuttings are collected, it may be kept mown short right up until winter.

DEADHEAD DAHLIAS

Dahlias will keep producing new flowers well into autumn as long as they are deadheaded regularly. The easiest way to tell the difference between a spent flower and an emerging bud is by the shape: buds are invariably rounded whereas a spent flower is pointed and cone-shaped. Always cut back to the next side shoot – even if it means taking a long stem – as this will stimulate new flowers and avoid ugly spikes of stem.

And if you do not have dahlias then deadhead anything and everything daily – nothing else is so effective in keeping summer flowers lasting as long as possible.

TOMATOES

As August progresses, tomatoes steady ripen, working their way up the growing cordons. From now on the aim should be to develop as much fruit as possible and not encourage much more actual plant growth. A high potash feed such as liquid seaweed or home-made comfrey tea will help and I remove all the leaves around ripening fruit which exposes them to sunlight, increases sugars and speeds up ripening whilst also adding ventilation and reducing the risk of blight or viruses.

TAKE CUTTINGS

As August progresses semi ripe cuttings taken from current season’s wood that has started to harden off are increasingly available and also increasingly likely to root quickly. In principal it is best to take cuttings in the morning whilst the plant is full of moisture but in practise it is something best done as and when you are minded to do it.

Always choose healthy, strong, straight growth free from any flowers or flower buds. Once you have taken material from the plant and placed it in the polythene bag go and pot them up immediately.

Strip off all lower leaves and side shoots so that only an inch or less of foliage remains. Cut the bare stem to size with a sharp knife or secateurs and bury it in a container of very gritty or sandy compost.

Put this somewhere warm and bright but not on a south-facing windowsill as it may scorch. Water it well and then keep it moist with a daily spray from a hand mister to help stop the leaves drying out before new roots have time to form. You will know that the roots have formed when you see fresh new growth. At that point the cuttings can be removed from the pot and potted on individually before planting out next spring.

MAKING NEW STRAWBERRY PLANTS

After the early strawberries finish fruiting – usually the middle of July – they put their energy into producing new plants via runners. These are long shoots with one or more plantlets spaced along their length. As the plantlets touch the soil they put down roots, establish quickly and so the plant regenerates itself. By pinning them to the soil or onto a pot with compost in it and then separating it from the mother plant these can be harvested as new plants that will have more vigour than the parent and keep your stock replenished and refreshed. I dig up and compost the parent plant after four years as their productivity rapidly declines after this and they often accumulate viruses.

By the end of August the rooted plantlets are ready for planting out into a new bed that has had a generous amount of compost added to it as strawberries are greedy feeders (they should always be planted on soil that has not grown strawberries for at least three years to avoid possible viruses). Space these at least 12 inches apart and ideally twice that to allow for maximum growth and productivity. Keep them well watered and mulch with more compost in autumn.

SOWING AUTUMN SALAD CROPS

Sow hardy salad crops such as ‘Rouge d’hiver’ and ‘Winter Density’ lettuce and Corn Salad, Rocket, Land Cress, Purslane, Mizuna and Mibuna. Make one sowing now for harvesting in October and November and another in a month’s time that will crop in the new year if grown under cover. Either sow them into plugs that can be transplanted as seedlings or sow direct in rows. Thin the seedlings as they emerge and keep them weeded and well-watered.

PRUNING LAVENDER

To avoid woody, leggy plants, lavender should be pruned every year. The best time to do this is as soon as the flowers start to fade, which, depending on the variety, can be any time between midsummer and the end of August. But do not wait for the seed heads to form or the flowers to turn brown as you want to allow the maximum amount of time for regrowth before winter.

Cut back hard to a good compact shape but be sure to leave some new shoots on each stem – lavender will often not regrow from bare wood. These new shoots will grow fast and provide an attractive and healthy cover to protect the plant in winter and provide the basis of next year’s display.

COLLECTING SEED

Growing your favourite plants from seed is easy and practically without cost. Not only will this give you dozens of free plants for future years but also spares to give or swap with friends and family and August is the time to begin collecting seed from your garden.

Use brown paper envelopes – A5 is the ideal size – and either carefully cut the seed heads and upend them into the envelopes, seed head and all or else place the envelope over the seed head, seal it and then snip the stem off and store it upside down. Label each envelope clearly with the date, name of the plant and, ideally, the position in the garden, and store them in a cool, dry place.

After a week or two the seeds should be dry and can then be sieved, cleaned and stored in sealed packets. For longer term storage, a plastic tub with a tight lid stored in the fridge is ideal.

WATERING CAMELLIAS, AZALEAS AND RHODODENDRONS

Camellias, Azaleas and Rhododendrons form their flower buds in late summer and autumn. In other words the display that they give you next spring is largely determined over the coming weeks. If they are too dry the buds will not form properly and those that are made quite often subsequently drop off in the spring before flowering as a result of dehydration the previous autumn. So give them a good soak – with rainwater if at all possible – especially if they are growing in a container, and do so each week for the next couple of months.